Teenagers blockade Paris schools in protest over alleged police rape

Teenage demonstrators have blockaded more than a dozen high schools in and around Paris, mounting makeshift barricades and setting fire to cars, scooters and rubbish bins, in protest at the alleged rape of a young black man by police.

Authorities said nine students were arrested in the suburb of Clichy after about 100 youths set two cars and a motorbike alight, threw stones and shattered a shop window .

Eight more people were arrested after a larger crowd of students, some hooded and carrying flares, gathered at Place de la Nation in the east of the capital .

Some of the protest ers carried home made banners, including one reading “Revenge for Theo ” – a reference to a man identified as Théo L, who was allegedly raped with a police truncheon this month.

Another student was arrested in the western suburb of Nanterre after allegedly setting fire to mattresses. Hundreds more demonstrated in several cities outside Paris, including 300 in Montpellier.

A Paris education authority spokesman said extra security measures, including at least one school closure, had been taken after 16 of the area’s 103 lycées were blocked on Thursday morning and 12 others disrupted.

Police and CRS riot squads were on hand but relatively few violent incidents were reported, a police spokesman said.

The protest was called by a group called Mouvement Inter Luttes Indépendant, which posted photos of the demonstrations on its Facebook page. It demanded “justice for all victims of police violence” and denouncing “racist spot checks” by police on school students.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the education minister, appealed for calm, saying: “Young people’s emotion over the Théo affair is understandable, but we must let justice take its course.” Violence is “unacceptable”, she told reporters.

One police officer has been charged with raping Théo L in Aulnay-sous-Bois on 2 February, and three others have been charged with assault.

Four officers arrived at a housing estate in the northern Paris suburb and began stopping youths and asking to see identity papers. Théo, 22, was allegedly forced to the ground, beaten, and subsequently raped with a police baton, suffering such serious injuries that he needed emergency surgery.

French police are regularly accused of using excessive force, particularly against black and minority ethnic suspects.

The death in police custody last summer of Adama Traoré, a young black man, in Beaumont-sur-Oise outside Paris, and the slow reaction of authorities, sparked accusations of police violence and a state cover-up. An investigation is ongoing.